Meet Alice Sumo, the midwife who has 1,000 babies named after her in Liberia

Here's why Alice Sumo is making headlines:

WHO’S SHE?
Alice Sumo is a respected nurse in Liberia where she has been a midwife for nearly three decades.


THREE DECADES?
Yes. Did you know that she is so loved and respected in Liberia’s Montserrado County that 1,000 babies have been named after her?

1,000 BABIES NAMED ALICE?
Alice, whose name means 'peace', has worked through Civil War and Ebola to do her job. She delivered her first baby at gun point at the side of the road. In her three-decade career, she did not stop working even during the epidemic which claimed nearly 5,000 lives in her country in 2004 and 2005.

GO ALICE!
More than 1,000 children delivered at her clinic near Monrovia have been named after her. New mothers who Alice has cared for and supported through their pregnancy have called their daughters after her or if it's a boy, named him Alex.

WHERE DOES ALICE WORK NOW?
Alice now runs a maternal health centre opened by Save the Children in her rural community. It is one of five such facilities built by the charity in 2013 and includes a solar-powered vaccination refrigerator, a hand pump for clean water next to the clinic, which also serves the local population, and a motorbike enabling volunteers and staff to reach remote areas and to transport patients.

MORE POWER TO ALICE.
Yes. The children are a living testament to the impact Alice has had in one of the world’s poorest countries — a nation where a third of women give birth without a midwife.

(Images: www.savethechildren.org.uk)